Whitsunday Island from Hamilton Island, Queensland, Australia

View over Whitsunday Passage to Whitsunday Island.

The islands were made known to Europeans by the English explorer, James Cook, in 1770, but Australian aborigines knew all about them at least 6000 years before that and probably for even longer, back to the days before they actually were islands. The Whitsundays are the tops of coastal mountains that became cut off from the mainland during the end of the last ice age. The sea attained its current level about 6000 years ago.
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